...originals vs. prequel trilogy, at last the truth!...

Now there's a loaded response.


To me the scientific measure of how good the prequels were are indicated by how popular they were, which is indicated by their box office.

The only problem with that is the numerous movies that didn't do so well that later became classics and visa versa the numerous movies that make millions and are not so great, to say the least. Of course, some would argue that these classics are over-rated and these Hollywood flicks that make millions deserve every penny. That's the thing about being subjective, there isn't a provable right answer. You can only prove how liked and not like something is.

 

Most impressive. What other movie series has this kind of 6 for 6 track record like this?

TPM's pre-sold tickets weren't what put it over the top, it was the repeat buisness that did it.

That movie was in theaters all summer long, and then they re-released it for Christmas.

Hardly the pattern for a movie with great buzz that didn't deliver on the promise now is it?

I don't see what else there is to prove here. Obviously no movie (not even the original Star Wars) is going to be liked by everyone.

To me what matters is:

A) Lucas made the movies he wanted to make.

B) They were loved by enough fans to have become wildly successful.

The fact that some of us really didn't like them was something Lucas couldn't have avoided.

I can't see how he could have done better than he did when all is said and done.

He revived a series that had just about sputtered out of the main stream and brought it back into the spotlight in a lasting way that still isn't showing signs of slowing down.

This is all thanks to the prequels.

 

I couldn't agree more. Star Wars has been lifted to a Star Trek league "culture." ...all thanks to the prequels.

...Or George could have been a total d**k and not allowed the fans' love of his films to devise their own creations(books, websites,sabers,etc,etc,etc,etc).

 

I don't see what else there is to prove here. Obviously no movie (not even the original Star Wars) is going to be liked by everyone.

To me what matters is:

A) Lucas made the movies he wanted to make.

B) They were loved by enough fans to have become wildly successful.

Which just proves how subjective it is, as oppose to objective. Those who feel strongly for all six movies and those who feel jaded all have different reasons. You and I both like some of the same things about SW, but my reasoning for liking what I like has nothing to do with A or B, nor do I see why these things should make me love or dislike anything any more than I do. A and B hinge on other people's opinions. My opinion is something I take ownership of independent of what other people's opinion's are.


He revived a series that had just about sputtered out of the main stream and brought it back into the spotlight in a lasting way that still isn't showing signs of slowing down.

This is all thanks to the prequels.

The SW resurgence traces all the way back to 1991. Once the 80s were done SW started to make a come back. It was gradual and it did build to its climax with TPM, but SW was back on top by the time the SEs came out in 1997.

 

One could even argue that the fact that it climaxed with TPM rather than RotS or AotC is strong evidence in itself of the weakness of the prequels.

AotC was bested at the U.S. box-office by Spider-Man and The Two Towers, as well as internationally by Harry Potter 2. RotS won in America but was bested worldwide by Harry Potter 4. Out of all those films only The Two Towers was able to match (and exceed) TPM's worldwide take.

I thought about blaming this on the economic problems this decade, but since 1999 TPM's gross has also been topped by Harry Potter 1 and 5, Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3, and The Dark Knight (4 of those 6 in the three years following RotS).

 

I'd say to an extent, but not to the point where a vast majority of kids are dressing up as vader and clone troopers for halloween. Even after the SEs, it died down a tad. Plus, this resurgence was more reestablishing fans and old folks, alike. See, in a school period of 96-00, I was one of the FEW, out of 100s of students, who loved star wars for more than the hype reasons. I guess what I mean to say is that star wars has become a way of life, for a new generation. These kids growing up in the pt era will be 30 one day, and have something to show to their children. This is another reason I think George has some secrets up his sleeve he aint sharing with anyone.

 

Exactly!

 

Whether any one of us liked or disliked it is very subjective. Some of us think it's the best movie series ever, some think it's just "all right" others think it's sucks entirely. There's no need to prove any of this, because we all feel the way we say we do. Case closed.

What isn't subjective is how successful these movies were at the box office. They all did numbers that indicate massive repeat viewings. So as far as Lucas is concerned, they were wild successes.

This is true, but why did they wane in the first place? I think because the classic trilogy on it's own was only so great. It was the promise of the prequels that put the classic trilogy back on top by '97.

As far as the box office "climaxing" with TPM, there are many factors that could have contributed to that. For example, TPM wasn't released on VHS for over a year after it was released in theaters. The DVD took even longer to come out. So if you wanted to see TPM, you had to go to a theater. AOTC and ROTS were both released on DVD within the same year they came out in theaters. Of course people were less likely to see those movies as many times knowing they could own the DVD within a few months.

I know that while I saw TPM 21 times at full price (then lost count in the dollar theaters), I only saw AOTC and ROTS 7 times each in the theater. I knew I could get the DVD and watch it as many times as I wanted to by the end of the year.

 

I think because the classic trilogy on it's own was only so great. It was the promise of the prequels that put the classic trilogy back on top by '97.



Are you serious? If it wasn't for the OT the PT would have stopped after TPM. Its the PT that owes the OT everything.

I like the PT but they are no where near as good as the OT they are not even close. The OT has always been on top they didnt need any help. They have always been considered to be among some of the greatest movies ever made.

Its been over 30 years since they came out and still they are loved by millions of fans around the world. Where as most SW fans dont even like the PT and its only been 10 since thet came out.

When was the last time you saw any of the PT movies on the top 10 lists of greates movies ever made? Never where as the OT will always have ANH & ESB in there somewhere.


Again its the PT thats owes everything to the OT without it the PT would have crashed and burned.

 

Some would argue that the PT was burdened by the OT's legacy. I'm one of those.

I've already written about this phenomenon in greater detail (page 4 of this thread if you're interested) but here's the long and short of it:

The OT is generally regarded as one of the best sci-fi adventures ever and it was a tough act to follow. It's really no surprise that the PT wasn't lauded as the second coming.

But I believe that if the PT wasn't Star Wars, the criticism wouldn't be as harsh as it was. Whilst somewhat justified, the love story and acting is not as horrible compared to other blockbusters Star Wars had to compete with. Out of the top of my head, I can point to the lacklustre acting in the X-Men series and the love story of Spiderman 3 was several times worse than that seen in AOTC and ROTS.

Personally, I can't understand why anyone would have any gripes with the story. It's surprisingly tight and well-structured throughout the trilogy with a satisfying pay-off in ROTS. It actually feels more like a trilogy than the OT, which seemed to suffer from a creator that made it up as he went along. Neither can I see the criticism against the CGI. The effects of the PT have, in general, fared better than those of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

If we imagine for a while that there was no OT and that episode one was actually the first episode, I think people would have a different view of it. It would be viewed as a series with some clunky acting and dialogue, but with an intriguing story and loads of eye-candy. It wouldn't be something ground-breaking or fantastic, but neither wouldn't it be considered this mediocre action-adventure that many seem to think today.

Which I think is unfair. Excluding the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the rebooted Batman franchise, the PT is one of the better blockbusters to grace the screens the past decade. I rank it way above the Matrix trilogy (which devolved into a pretentious mess and which is now largely forgotten), the Pirates trilogy (which screwed up a winning formula more massively than Lucas seemingly had done with TPM) or the never ending cascade of mediocre-to-bad Super-Hero flick (excluding the two first Spidermans and Iron Man).

So no, I don't agree with your assessment. The PT owes the OT very little. If anything judgement on the PT is harsher because of the OT.

And this post turned out to be more long than short

 

^^^^^^^^


I have to say that was a fine post and I do agree with what you have said there. The point i was trying to make was that Go-mer said the OT needed the PT to bring it back on top which is simply not the case. The OT has been regarded as some of the best movies ever made for over 30 years. We didnt need the PT to remind us of that.

Again great post you have made excellent points and changed my POV a great deal.

 

All I was saying is Star Wars was a huge hit in 1977, ESB blew the doors off audiences once again, but by the time ROTJ rolled around, critics started getting harsh. Then there was a gulf where Star Wars was still looked upon well, but it wasn't in the everyday mainstream anymore. Some fans got into the books, but the EU was hardly a main stream success like the movies were.

After they announced the prequels, and the SE versions, there was a resurgence in the main stream. Sure it was based on the example of the classic trilogy, but it was also due in large part to the promise of a prequel trilogy.

To suggest TPM would have crashed and burned at the box office without the classic trilogy's legacy to prop it up is hard for me to swallow. Sure the people who waited in line to see it opening day were there because of how much they loved the classic trilogy, but the repeat viewers who kept coming back again and again did so after knowing how the movie turned out.

 

Well, OF COURSE in our illiterate culture a book will never be as successful as a movie. But here's some fun facts:

STAR WARS EU 1991-1995

Heir to the Empire spent 19 weeks on the NYT Bestsellers list, including a week at #1.
Dark Force Rising spent 15 weeks on the list the following year.
The Last Command spent 12 weeks on the list the year after that.

That's pretty 'mainstream', as far as a few books spun off a movie series are concerned. Also:

Truce at Bakura - 7 weeks.
Courtship of Princess Leia - 3 weeks.
The Crystal Star - 2 weeks.
Children of the Jedi - 4 weeks.
Darksaber - 3 weeks.

And these are considered among fans to be some of the WORST EU novels (well, at least they WERE up until the Del Rey megaseries started)

I couldn't find data for the paperback novels, video games, or comics in that same time period, but I recall them being quite successful as well.

Which people expected to generally be more of the same thing we'd gotten with the OT. New movies meant more Star Wars. And until the prequels "more Star Wars" meant more OT-style Star Wars.

I've mentioned this before, but I for one bought way too many pre-sale tickets on the assumption that TPM was going to be every bit as good as the first three, and I actually had myself convinced that it WAS for close to a year before I came to terms with the notion that it was OKAY to not like something even though it was called 'Star Wars'. I ended up seeing TPM close to ten times in theatres, I believe, most of them trying to convince myself that it wasn't THAT bad. I CAN'T have been the only person to do this.

I saw the other two prequels twice each. Basically, my love of the OT is so great that I WANTED to like these movies, and I gave them each more of a chance than I would give any other movie.

If I wasn't an OT fan, I wouldn't have bothered with RotS after the disappointment that was AotC. Instead, due to a faint hope that it could feel more like 'real' Star Wars than the other two I ended up seeing it twice. And as I've said, I'm fairly certain that I'm not the only person who did this.

Heck, I had friends who came to RotS not because they had any real interest in the film (some hadn't even seen AotC), but because it was the last Star Wars movie. If you think that doesn't have anything to do with the legacy of the OT, then I don't think we have any more to discuss.

 

I can appreciate where you're coming from, but TPM's repeat viewings weren't all the result of people not being able to admit to themselves they didn't like it.

I think the Star Wars Eu such as the books and video games kept Star Wars from falling off the radar, but it was mostly the hard core SW fans who really got into them.

Now with the prequels over and done, we have the Clone Wars TV show, a live action TV show in the works. After the classic trilogy we got stuff like the Droids and Ewoks cartoons and the live action Ewok movies. I think if the prequels were really such a catastrophic let down, we wouldn't be seeing these high quality spin off projects.

As far as people expecting more Star Wars in the mold of the classic trilogy, I don't see how they could have expected that considering each movie in the classic trilogy was vastly different from each other. Staying true to the Star Wars legacy would have implied changing the tone as usual.

 

All three prequels, especially Phantom Menace, were a summer event, a ton of people went and most probably even had a swell time. That doesn't mean they all love it forever. If it did, the dvd wouldn't be wildly outsold by The Matrix.

 

Where do you get the impression that the matrix outsold TPM?

 

No, but I think it was probably a factor, along with the massive pre-sales of tickets. And I'm certain that the numbers for AotC and RotS would have been lower if TPM had been the first film in it own series rather than the fourth Star Wars movie.

If you look at the numbers though, it becomes clear that either a) it was more than just hardcore fans or b) the number of hardcore fans was HUGE. Either way, Star Wars was doing just fine before any SEs or prequels came along. The movies may have boosted the franchise into a larger spotlight, but it's not like the SEs and PT resurrected a dying franchise. The EU books, comics and games of the early 90s did that.

I think it has less to do with relative quality of the films than with Lucas wanting to do more SW. When he finished RotJ, he was tired of the franchise and wanted to move on. When he finished RotS, he talked about wanting to tell more Star Wars stories than what he fit into the PT.

The other BIG difference is that, whereas after RotJ Lucas wanted to make stories about Ewoks, which audiences hadn't wanted in the movies to begin with, this time Lucas is doing a show about the Clone Wars, which many people think should have been the subject of the PT to begin with.

The tone of the OT is fairly consistent: adventure. Sure, things get a little heavier in the sequels, but the films are still lighthearted adventures. In the PT that spirit of adventure is mostly gone.

 

Why would you say it's gone? I thought the prequels packed in a lot of high adventure, despite the fact they also got into political discourse.

 

Action =/= adventure. The PT lacked compelling drama, and without that action is just action.

The spirit of adventure cannot exist unless the audience is identifying with the characters, and in the PT that's simply all too rare an occurrence.

 

Perhaps for you it was all too rare. I had no trouble relating to the characters, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

For us, the action and adventure wasn't negated by a failure to identify with the characters.

 

We might want to be Luke (callow youth who blossoms into a sanctimonious druid), Han (rogue tempered by love) or Leia (spitfire tempered by love), but if most of us were deposited into a space opera, we'd probably hew closer to Anakin (the petty tyrant who yearns to crawl back into his mother's womb), Obi-Wan (intelligent and well-meaning, but a failure of a teacher and brother) and Padme (principled, loving woman in full denial of her hubby's misdeeds).

The PT characters are really screwed up--which is why they garner my interest.

 

I'll give you Padme and Obi-Wan on that one but Anakin is almost comically beyond any relatable person. The chosen prophecied messiah with superpowers and a killing streak. Hey, we've all been there, man.

 

Thanks

And I must say that you are completely right. The OT was doing dandy before the PT and most likely continued doing dandy had there no been a PT. The PT did spur the Star Wars fever of the late 90's on but it wasn't the sole originator of it.

I disagree. I remember me and my friends playing many Star Wars games during the late 90's (Shadows of the Empire, X-Wing, TIE-Fighter, Star Wars Monopoly) and having many Star Wars action figures when I was between the ages of 7-10. Me and my friends were really into it, though I wouldn't call us hard-core fans, because we enjoyed the movies. Heck, I remember Star Wars toys having their own section in the toy shop.

Being a kid of the late 90's, I can verify that Star Wars was certainly on the radar and a natural part of growing up. Not bad for a series that ended 6 years before I was born.

 

Accidental double-post

 

Replace Hard Core with Star Wars fan then.

Any way you slice this, the Star Wars phenomenon waned between ROTJ and the late 90's.